“Our [responsibility] as government and most importantly as mothers and fathers, is to fight to the bitter end for the future of our youth,” said Premier Sisi Ntombela.

Bloemfontein Courant's Bonolo Moloi reported through the launch of the Free State Nemisa CoLab, ten thousand young people will be trained in four fundamental pillars of the digital skills development programme; basic digital literacy, specialised programmes, digital transformation, and research on the development of work. A further two hundred SMMEs will also be trained through this progressive partnership.

Ntombela spoke at the launch of the programme at the Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT), which is a strategic partnership between the CUT, the Free State Provincial Government, and the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (Nemisa) in line with the growth and development plan of the province and the existing MoU with Nemisa.

This digital skills development programme will be rolled out in all the districts of the province as a deliberate strategy to develop a youth that will respond to the divergent needs of all Free State towns.

The programme is in line with the growth and development plan of the Free State, as well as the national digital skills training for the proper use of technology, to improve the quality of life for all people in South Africa.

“The government does not communicate or showcase its good stories enough. This is where the CUT and Nemisa come in in these discussions – the development of electronic and visual media to help equip our youth to tell the stories of the Free State, through their lens; and to develop a workforce developed to respond to the needs of our economy,” MEC Gadija Brown said.

“We are a mineral-rich province but our people are living in abject poverty. Our people are dying a slow death because of alcohol and substance abuse. We welcome this massive empowerment programme that seeks to capacitate our youth. In addition to this, we need to bring in the various SITAs to assist in upskilling the current workforce and train many more young people in agriculture, as well as mining, to accelerate economic growth and to create jobs, particularly for young people,” said Ntombela.

Nemisa was established by the departments of communications and digital technologies, and their core business is skills development. The following are some of the creative arts disciplines offered: content production, radio, animation, interactive media, web development, graphic design, digital photography, and story-telling using digital devices. Digital Technologies courses are as follows: +digital literary, data science, artificial intelligence, robotics, digital transformation, etc.

Bloemfontein Courant/Bonolo Moloi